Mediterranean quarantines, 1750-1914

Space, identity and power

Edited by John Chircop and Francisco Javier Martínez

Combines case-studies on Western European countries with others on Islamic states and communities

Recognises the tensions that lie behind present-day issues such as the return of epidemics or the global flows of migrants and refugees

Pays special attention to the Mecca pilgrimage as sanitary-political challenge

Examines either the sanitary, or the social, cultural and political dimensions of quarantines and lazarettos in the Mediterranean during the

Analyses how the containment of epidemics, especially cholera and bubonic plague, was inseparably associated with processes of state formation, territorial definition, national affirmation, migration control, colonial expansion or identity building

Mediterranean quarantines, 1750-1914

Space, identity and power

First Edition

Edited by John Chircop and Francisco Javier Martínez

Description

Mediterranean quarantines investigates how quarantine, the centuries-old practice of collective defence against epidemics, experienced significant transformations from the eighteenth century in the Mediterranean Sea, its original birthplace. The new epidemics of cholera and the development of bacteriology and hygiene, European colonial expansion, the intensification of commercial interchanges, the technological revolution in maritime and land transportation and the modernisation policies in Islamic countries were among the main factors behind such transformations. The book focuses on case studies on the European and Islamic shores of the Mediterranean showing the multidimensional nature of quarantine, the intimate links that sanitary administrations and institutions had with the territorial organisation of states, international trade, the construction of national, colonial, religious and professional identities of political regimes.